363173 - compat problem: mozilla.in relies on traditional, non-POSIXish behavior of expr(1)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Startup and Profile System, defect)

Description

[Roman Neuhauser]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060911 Red Hat/1.0.5-0.1.el4 SeaMonkey/1.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla XULRunner 1.8.0.4_0000000000

SUSv3 on expr(1):

    Also note that this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 permits implementations to extend utilities. The expr utility permits the integer arguments to be preceded with a unary minus. This means that an integer argument could look like an option. Therefore, the conforming application must employ the "--" construct of Guideline 10 of the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines to protect its operands if there is any chance the first operand might be a negative integer (or any string with a leading minus).

that guideline is:

Guideline 10:
    The argument -- should be accepted as a delimiter indicating the end of options. Any following arguments should be treated as operands, even if they begin with the '-' character. The -- argument should not be used as an option or as an operand.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=expr&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+6.1-RELEASE&format=html

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install xulrunner
2. run "xulrunner --version"

Actual Results:  
roman@dagan ~ 1041:0 > expr --foo : '.*'   
expr: illegal option -- -
usage: expr [-e] expression


Expected Results:  
roman@dagan ~ 1042:2 > expr \( --foo : '.*' \)
5

Comment 1

[Roman Neuhauser]

Attachment: fixes expr(1) calls in mozilla.in used by xulrunner

Comment 2

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

Confirming and setting status to new. This bug potentially
affects all systems which include strictly POSIX-compliant
implementations of expr.
Reassigning to the reporter since he attached what seems to
be a working patch.
The problem here is very similar to what we encountered
with Firefox back in 2004 (see bug #275438). On some
platforms setting the environment variable EXPR_COMPAT may
help to work around the problem.

Comment 3

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

Comment on attachment 247987 [details] [diff] [review]
fixes expr(1) calls in mozilla.in used by xulrunner

The proposed changes seem to be safe and are even more portable regarding older systems than "expr -- ...".

Comment 4

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

This bug will (hopefully :-) be fixed by the fix for bug 461542.

Comment 5

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

Fixed on trunk (1.9.1 should follow in a few days).